Buddhist tantra

Buddhist tantra is a body of esoteric teachings and practices recorded in tantric scriptures and transmitted through initiation. It uses ritual, visualization, mantra, and disciplined guidance to pursue awakening.

Abhisheka: Abhisheka is a ritual initiation that authorizes a practitioner to undertake a tantric practice or study a tantric teaching. Initiation grants access to practices whose transmission defines Buddhist tantra.
Buddhism: Buddhism is a family of religious and philosophical traditions based on teachings associated with the Buddha. Tantric traditions develop within Buddhism and retain its goals of liberation and awakening.
Guhyasamāja Tantra: The Guhyasamāja Tantra is an influential early Buddhist tantra that became central to later Indian and Tibetan tantric systems. Its mandala and ritual systems helped shape subsequent tantric interpretation.
Tibetan Buddhism: Tibetan Buddhism is a family of Buddhist traditions rooted in Tibet and neighboring regions, incorporating extensive tantric lineages. It preserves and teaches a broad range of tantric scriptures and practices.
Sūtrayāna: Sūtrayāna is the Buddhist path based primarily on the sutras and their gradual disciplines, contrasted with tantric methods. It offers a useful comparison with tantra’s initiation-based rituals and accelerated path claims.
Deity yoga: Deity yoga is a tantric meditation in which practitioners visualize themselves as a Buddhist deity and cultivate that deity’s qualities. It turns awakened qualities into the direct object of tantric meditation.
Mahayana: Mahayana is a major Buddhist tradition that emphasizes the bodhisattva path and awakening for the benefit of all beings. Buddhist tantra arose within Mahayana settings and adopts its bodhisattva ideal.
Pāla Empire: The Pāla Empire was a Buddhist- and Hindu-patronizing dynasty that ruled much of eastern India from the eighth to twelfth centuries. Its monasteries and patrons supported the late Indian Buddhist institutions that transmitted tantra.
Shingon Buddhism: Shingon Buddhism is a Japanese esoteric Buddhist tradition founded by Kūkai in the ninth century. Shingon developed a distinct Japanese system of tantric ritual and initiation.
Theravada: Theravada is a Buddhist tradition grounded in the Pali Canon and preserved chiefly in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Its mainstream forms do not center the tantric scriptures and initiations characteristic of Vajrayana.

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